NTT DATA agreed to acquire Dell Services, an IT services provider recognized for its depth in vertical industries and for its offerings around infrastructure services, cloud services, application services, and business process outsourcing. The purchase price was reported at $3.05 billion. NTT Data said the agreement will expand its brand and leadership position globally.

John McCain, CEO of NTT DATA, led this transaction and will have overall responsibility for leading the combined business.

Researchers at NTT demonstrated the wavelength conversion of a single-photon wave packet required for quantum information-communication technologies. The company said the technique enables it deterministically change the color and shape of a single-photon wave packet in a lossless manner.

NTT lossless scheme utilized an all-optical effect called cross-phase modulation (XPM) to control the phase of light (signal pulses) via a change in the refractive index of a medium induced by another light (control pulses).

"When the refractive index varies dynamically, frequency modulation is induced to the signal field as a result of a signal’s non-uniform phase shift. By using single photons as the signal field, we can modulate the wavelength of the photons (Fig. 1). Since XPM always occurs regardless of the intensity of the control field, the wavelength conversion occurs without a photon loss. This is in contrast to the conventional all-optical wavelength conversion scheme for photons, namely nonlinear frequency mixings, where an intense control field is required for high conversion efficiency."

Researchers at Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and the University of Toronto are proposing all-photonic quantum repeaters for long-distance quantum communication. If achieved, such devices would disprove the necessity of matter quantum memories in long distance quantum communications, which is seen by many as the ultimate future of optical communications.

In a paper published this week by the journal Nature Communications, the researchers said their all-photonic scheme paves a completely new route towards long-distance quantum communication based only on optical devices. Compared to matter quantum memories, this approach eliminates the quantum interface between matter and photons. The design is based on existing optical technology, such as linear optical elements, single-photon sources, photon detectors and an active feed-forward technique.

The coupled-core MCF (CC-MCF) features 4 pure-silica cores in the standard 125-µm cladding. The developed fiber has achieved the attenuation of 0.158 dB/km at the wavelength of 1550 nm and the spatial mode dispersion (SMD) of 6.1 ps/√km*4 in the wavelength from 1520 to 1580 nm, both of which are the lowest ever reported in the optical fibers for space division multiplexing.

The company says the new fiber has set records for the low attenuation and the low spatial mode dispersion in the optical fibers for space division multiplexing. Attenuation, or (transmission) loss, is the amount of light degraded by scattering and absorption while traveling in an optical fiber. With a lower attenuation, optical signals can be transmitted for a longer distance.